Obama At His Best

Did anyone watch the entire Q&A session that the President had with the GOP Caucus the other day? If you haven't seen it, it is compelling public affairs programming worth spending the time to see.

I am sure that the Republicans rue the decision to let cameras broadcast live the 1 hour and 20 minute give and take session in Baltimore! It was a rare moment of truth as the Republican Caucus squared off with a man who was unafraid to call them out repeatedly for their use of half truths and misinformation regarding many of the issues that the GOP has demonized the Democrats with over the last year. President Obama had a command of the facts and issues that shot holes in most of the arguments used to accuse the Democrats of, among other things, bloating the federal deficit, foisting socialist health care reform on the country, and granting ‘boutique’ tax cuts to selected groups in America.

On its surface, it was actually a civil exchange. However, each Republican who asked a question of the President began the question with an accusation or a false assumption that Obama promptly poked holes through before he responded with a cogent and intelligent response, enumerating the false premises in the question and then answering with clarity and precision.

It was clear that the people in the room could not make headway with political positioning statements. The President indicated repeatedly that those kinds of false assumptions boxed them into positions with their constituents that left them no room for negotiating solutions. Over and over Obama pointed out to them that the way they were asking their questions promoted an atmosphere of rancor designed to further their campaign positioning in the upcoming elections, rather than seeking an atmosphere of negotiation and problem solving arrived at by true compromise. The Republicans were flummoxed!

It was a rare moment indeed and gave me hope that Obama would actually make some progress in finding common ground with the Republicans. What he showed in that session was his determination to engage in real, useful discussion that could possibly lead to real solutions. It was frankly more leadership than I had come to expect from him lately. One only hopes that he will somehow find a way to drag the Republicans into the public eye repeatedly in this way so he can effect some real progress toward change by exposing the GOP’s intractability and penchant for non-productive confrontation.

The news media should re-broadcast the session in its entirety instead of spinning it only as a confrontational moment. Maybe then some of the conservative lemmings in this country would start using their brains and realize that the only way out of our problems is to work toward compromise.

A Hidden Agenda

I attended a memorial service last night for an acquaintance that I have known for the past several years.  He was a very smart and savvy businessman here in Southwest Florida who was one of those rare people who reads constantly, traveled widely and was a member of a ‘critical thinking’ group here in Naples.  The group would meet once a week and discuss world and national issues and possible solutions to problems we have all been thinking about over the last several years.  I was not a member, but at the service last night I met several of the people who were, and they were people who were not afraid to engage in conversation about anything of import.

I started talking with a man who was perhaps in his mid eighties, and as we remembered my friend, this gentleman revealed that he was very much ‘left’ of center while our friend was clearly ‘right’ of center, but they were good friends nonetheless and could argue energetically without malice.  The reason I relate this to all of you is that we spent the better part of 30 minutes discussing President Obama (who he had strongly supported in last years election) and the speech he was about to make last night.

This man, who I will call Hal, was very concerned that the President was not fulfilling the promise of ‘people mandated‘ change in the country.  Hal said that Obama was having to sacrifice the mandate he had won just to get anything done, which speaks volumes about the process in Washington of getting consensus on anything. 

Now with this moment of decision about troop commitment in Afghanistan, Hal was fearful that we would be drawn into a commitment that no one wanted, but that Obama felt compelled to pursue because of the security issues that demanded continued vigilance against the terrorist threat from abroad.

I started thinking about that, and frankly, I am not as concerned about our ‘security’ as so many on the right seem to be.  Hal agreed.  Then he asked a question that was chilling, “Do you think that perhaps there is a threat that none of us really knows about that has compelled Obama to adjust his thinking?”  I asked him what he meant (already knowing what he was going to say!)
“What do you suppose happened to the 50 or so nuclear warheads that the Russians ‘misplaced’ when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s?  No one knows where they are.  Suppose there are people who do know where they are and are afraid to let any of us know.”

That is a scary thought.  We have all been told repeatedly that there are controls on those devices and ‘as far as we can tell’ all are still secure. 

Do I really believe that?  Do you? 

Is it possible we feel compelled to pursue this band of rag tag Al Qaeda terrorists because there is a threat out there that no one is talking about publicly?  Hal just looked at me and his face took on a kind of pitiful smirk.  “There are many people who think we are not being told the entire truth about the threat.”

Suddenly, Obama’s position makes a little more sense. 

My own personal view is that we are on a fool’s errand in Afghanistan.  There is no way the  President can guarantee that we will start withdrawing troops in 2011.  Too many variables can disrupt that timetable.  But if there is a hidden agenda that we don’t know about, it might explain his compulsion to pursue this course of action, rather than to be strong enough to disengage and start focusing on nation building in the United States.

Hal looked at me, shook my hand and said, “Nice to meet you!”,  and I was suddenly more concerned than before we had met.

Escape?

My friend told me the other day that there was a two-word answer to all of the country’s hysteria and political frenzy:  New Zealand!   He said he was doing some long range planning for it now…..  At first I chuckled, and then as I thought about it, I was intrigued, so I asked him what he was going to do there.  He told me he was going to make cheese, and did I want to go with him and run a vineyard to make the wine!

Needless to say, the thought of a fresh start in a completely new place has its breathtaking allure, but is that the only solution?  As the days go by, I wonder more and more about that. 

This past weekend in Naples, there was a ‘rally’ at a major intersection in town with about 3500 people attending waving flags and placards with slogans like “Dump Obamacare” and “Get the Socialist/Nazi out of the White House!” or “Revolution Now!”
A similar rally happened in Washington this past weekend with tens of thousands of people marching and being egged on by such intellectual giants as Jim DeMint of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas.

There seems to be this tide of hysteria and stupidity that is rising in our country, fomented by the deteriorating economic condition of all the people who are doing the shouting and sign waving.  They all seem to believe that they are in this mess because of the new guy in the White House and all his Marxist ideas and policies.  They somehow believe that all their woes suddenly appeared last January 20, and gee, things sure were great before he got there.

What morons!  I see a bunch of idiots who are incited by neo-con ‘tea party’ fascists who can’t seem to stomach the fact that they have lost control.  They are intent on spreading lies to further their arguments and spread mistrust about the government. 

It seems to be getting worse too.  I listen to the interviews and sound bites from the people at these rallies and hear what they are saying and wonder if they ever read anything or have an independent thought in their heads.  How is it that a human being can just accept what someone else says as gospel without any personal thinking about whether it is right or wrong?  Are they just so emotionally overwrought that intelligent analysis is just not part of their toolbox?

Maybe it is just that I am living in a conservative bastion here in SW Florida, but I fear that what is happening is akin to a mob mentality that ultimately ends up spiraling out of control as the the level of civil discourse plummets.  So when my friend floats the trial balloon of a fresh start in a place less frenzied, there is a clear attraction that would not be there in calmer times.

I don’t want to live in fear of a mob psychology overtaking our society.  I want us to find accommodation and compromise with people with different points of view.  Is that possible in an atmosphere of fear and hysteria?  Listen to Talk Radio, my friends….ask yourself if this is civil discourse and honest criticism---- or paranoia, half truths and subtextual racial extremism. 

I think you know the answer already………

Does the President Have the Right to Address the Nation's Youth?

I am trying to keep my dismay at bay.  For the past two days I have been listening to the reasons why the President of the United States should not be allowed to address the students of the nation, and wondering what country I am living in!  Has anyone bothered to check out the content of this proposed speech before they accuse Obama of being a Marxist Communist who pals around with terrorists and wants to harm our children?  He wants to deliver a message to students next week emphasizing hard work, encouraging young people to do their best in school, for God’s sake!. The temper tantrum the right is throwing in response only helps to show how radical and maniacal conservatives have become.

I know the objection is that students are a captive audience, but to accuse the man of trying to create a slumbering mass of mind-numbed children in the service of the ‘Exalted Leader’ is ludicrous.  I guess promoting success, achievement and perseverance is somehow too radical for our children to assimilate into their brains without being brainwashed!

Where does this absolute visceral hatred for this man come from?  As Joan Walsh from Salon has expressed: “The hysteria Obama inspires in his far-right foes is primeval, primordial. From the Birthers’ obsession with the facts of his birth — which lets them obsess about his origins in miscegenation — to the paranoia that he’s coming for the children, there’s a deep strand of irrational paranoia that can’t be anything other than racial. These people don’t merely disagree with him, they distrust and dislike him viscerally. He’s not merely wrong, he’s scary; even terrifying.”  Or as Jim Shaw of the Huffington Post said yesterday, “Beyond all the ’state indoctrination’ and even Hitler Youth analogies being propagated by Obama’s school chat, I’m wondering how much there is (or is also) a racist meme at play. It’s something along the lines of: You can’t trust your children alone with this man … knowing how black men are. Wink, wink.”

When has this ever happened in this country?  I cannot remember ever feeling the pressure from this kind of opposition on the part of a large group of our countrymen.  Maybe during the McCarthy era in the early 50’s there was this kind of fear and paranoia, but not for the President and a major party in our political system.  McCarthy was paranoid about Communists.  Here we have a major political party paranoid about our leadership in a way that is destructive, seditious and maliciously false.  That seems new and frightening.

It takes my breath away.  This is not the America I once knew as a boy.  This is not the country I idolized as a child when I raised my hand over my heart to pledge allegiance to the flag to One Nation Under God.  We are living in a strange and unwelcoming place where the voices of hate trumpet visceral, irrational innuendo and lies.  Where does our precious America go from here?

Leadership

I pushed pause on the TIVO and backed up my recording of the network news to hear again what I thought I had just heard….Yep!  There was Chuck Todd standing in front of the White House saying that President Obama was going to speak to a joint session of Congress next week on health care and his advisors were hoping it would help boost his poll ratings!   Good Grief!  Is that what this is all about??  Poll ratings?

We need to stop for a moment and get our bearings.  This whole question of health care reform is not about anything less than a central moral question.  It’s not about money, it’s not about politics, it’s not about polls.  It is simply a moral issue questioning whether we are a country where we take care of each other or not.  Many things we debate have clear policy issues that have several sides one may choose to be on, but with health care, there are no sides. 

Suppose you were in a hospital bed, just having come through a life saving operation while the fellow two floors up from you needs the exact same operation but doesn’t have the money or the insurance to have it.  Isn’t there something wrong there?  Shouldn’t we as a nation of liberty and justice for all find a way to care for each other in the most basic way of all, to deliver a healthy life to our citizens?

And yet here are the conservatives and Republicans with their holier than thou attitude spreading myths and lies to discredit the notion that we all have this  responsibility to each other.  You have heard all the garbage coming from them for the last month. 

Let me ask you something….why would they want to see any reform at all?  It is not in their best interest!  Most are receiving political donations from insurance companies or drug companies.  All of them have no desire to allow a progressive administration to have a success—that would discredit their handling of the country for the last 8 years.  If they can make this President and his administration fail on this signature issue, then their re-election chances improve next year and –glory be!—they will have crippled Obama so their chances in the next presidential election will be soooooo much better!  They have even had the unmitigated gaul to publicly proclaim that fact!

And where is President Obama?  He is behind the magic curtain trying to pull the strings and nudge Congress to come up with the plan.  That is a fool’s errand if I ever saw one.

Correct me if I am wrong here---last November 4th a substantial majority of the country voted for this man to do some things he said he would do: institute Universal Health Care, end the war in Iraq, end the war in Afghanistan, end the abuses and insults to our Constitution and our individual rights, have a transparent government that would wear the shiny patina of ‘change’.

We all were ecstatic that night as we watched the crowd in Grant Park and saw the hope, the relief and the pure joy of expectation in the eyes of the people there.  I know it was a reflection of the same elation I felt sitting in my den.  We were all one in that moment of great possibility.  Where are we now?

We expected Barak Obama to be the leader he said he was.  C’mon, Barry!  Grow a set and take the bull by the horns and LEAD!  Show us that this Health Care thing is a MORAL issue that we all must get behind.  Stop worrying about your polls and make all of us, and especially the jerks in Congress, realize that there is no alternative to doing the right thing.  Lay out what you want to do in specific terms and make us all believe we must do it.  Channel Harry Truman, for God’s sake!

That is the kind of leadership I voted for…..didn’t you?

Journalism or Theatre?

What a pleasant surprise to hear from all of you! Your words of encouragement are much appreciated.

Well, the good news is that my doctor says I am good for another 10,000 miles and I can truthfully say I am feeling great today!! Nothing like a good report from the Doc.

I made mention in my last post that I am really tired of the incessant garbage spewing forth from right wing Talk Radio. You know I am living here in SW Florida which went Republican in the last election by a 2:1 margin, so it should come as no surprise that the airwaves here are filled with not only the nationally syndicated blowhards like Hannity, Levin, Beck, Limbaugh, Cunningham and Ingraham, but also locally by a 40 year old woman named Mandy Connell during morning drive time on the only real AM station here in Naples/Fort Myers. I like to listen to the radio at night, and also when I wake up to see what is going on in the world before I roll out of bed and have a cup of coffee and read the online NYT.

More often than not, as my consciousness materializes I find myself listening to the abrasive voice of this woman screeching and yammering about all the things in the world that are Obama's fault....everything from the economic collapse to ruination of the environment. Her delivery is so filled with vitriolic, snide, demeaning hatred that I assume that anyone listening is completely repulsed by her rantings. I am so wrong! Caller after caller comes on the air and agrees with her, while adding their own venomous comments to her conclusions about all the things that are being done wrong by our new President and the liberals, progressives, Democrats, etc. It is a scary thing to behold! These people are borderline seditionists, inciting all of the non thinking automatons in the listening audience to go to Tea Parties and show up at town meetings to scream at members of Congress or anyone else that disagrees with them.

Whatever happened to reasonable discourse?

I wonder how many of these people are really out there? The media would have us believe that it is an increasingly smaller group of core base conservatives, but I am not so sure. These are people with guns (oh by the way, I discovered that 85% of the population here in SW Florida has firearms!) who are buying more guns. Now they are starting to appear at Presidential rallies, national parks and other public places. What country is this? I find it all pretty scary.

I have had a few back and forth emails with this Connell character, accusing her of half truths, distortions, erroneous conclusions and the like, but she is undaunted. I tried to make her understand that good journalism requires that she present a balanced view. She said she was not a journalist, but rather an entertainer! I would call it Theatre of Absurd Journalism! She, like all the rest of these radio personalities, is willing to believe anything regardless of fact if it furthers her argument and can incite her audience, and bring ratings to the station. That means they can charge more for advertising of course! And to think I spent half my life in 'show business'!

Ah well, now that you know what I think about that, let me leave you with some thoughts about something that Kathy said in her comment. She told us that she has tried to write to Obama everyday to tell him how she feels about the non-punishment given to Wall Street perpetrators when compared with jail terms for people stealing food to live , and how the 'deck is stacked against us', the ordinary citizen. I hear this from lots of people... the average citizen has lost control.

We all hoped for a real change when Barak Obama assumed the Presidency, and what we are seeing is what many predicted---the slow erosion of our hopes as the realities of money and the real Washington game becomes visible to us all. Every day we read about some other concession that the administration is making that is the antithesis of the promised changes that we had all hoped would restore the tenets of truth, honesty, compassion and intelligence to the way the government is run and how we want it to consider the needs of real people. What we are discovering is what we have subliminally known all along: Money is the true driver of everything. It corrupts all of our best intentions.

I am an eternal optimist, however. I believe that the inherent goodness of the human heart is stronger than anything else. I will still hope for enlightenment on the part of those who wear the blinders of the profit motive. There is nothing wrong with making money as long as it is not at the expense of our humanity and our souls. Let us pray!.........